The story focuses on the period after Lincoln's re-election in November 1864, and the president's efforts to get the 13th Amendment to free the slaves passed in the House of Representatives. Nevada, the newest state in the Union, played an important role in Lincoln's plans prior to his tragic assassination.

By the time Congress approved an Enabling Act for Nevada Territory and the president signed it on March 21, 1864, President Lincoln already had issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War appeared to be winding down. The Union had won decisive victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and the Confederacy was on the defensive. Lincoln sought re-election in order to reconstruct the South after the war and promote amendments to the U.S. Constitution freeing the slaves and addressing civil rights and suffrage issues.

Lincoln, a moderate Republican, initially faced a three-way race against General John C. Fremont, a radical Republican, and General George McClellan, a Democrat. Earlier in the Civil War, Lincoln unceremoniously had relieved both generals of their commands.

If the popular and Electoral College vote were indecisive and the election went to the House of Representatives, as it had in 1824-25 in a four-way race, Lincoln supporters believed that the new state's lone Congressman would support the incumbent president.

Lincoln and the moderate Republicans believed that the Confederate states were in need of a lengthy reconstruction.

Many conditions related to the status of African-Americans would have to be addressed in new state constitutions and statutory law before a rebel state could rejoin the union.

Fremont and the radical Republicans, however, wanted to punish the South harshly, conducting war crime trials and executing convicted Confederate political and military leaders. Questions were raised if these former Union states had forfeited their sovereignty by withdrawing from the United States.

McClellan and the Democrats, on the other hand, wanted to readmit Confederate states back into the union with virtually no conditions.

Fremont dropped out of the presidential race on Sept. 21, 1864, after brokering a deal with the Lincoln administration to remove the Postmaster General.

Nevada, shortly after its voters approved the state constitution on Sept. 7, was no longer critical to a Lincoln win. President Lincoln proclaimed Nevada the 36th state on Oct. 31, a week before the national election, and then went on to carry Nevada and the nation by a decisive margin over General McClellan.

While it is true that Nevadans gave the beleaguered president three Republican members of Congress to help rebuild the nation, contrary to popular belief, our two U.S. senators, James Nye and William M. Stewart, did not vote on the 13th Amendment.

The Senate had approved the amendment proposing to abolish slavery on April 8, 1864.

However, Rep. Henry G. Worthington arrived in time in Washington, D.C., to vote on the amendment in the House on Jan. 31, 1865. The late Leslie B. Gray, in his work "The Source and The Vision" (1989), wrote Worthington "was one of the two key votes which gave it a constitutional majority." The vote was 119 to 56, meeting the necessary two-thirds requirement for amending the constitution. Rep. Worthington's heretofore obscure grave site in the Congressional Cemetery was marked with a sizable monument in 2000, thanks to then-U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan and Fallon newspaper editor and publisher David Henley.

Illinois, the home of President Lincoln, was the initial state to ratify the 13th Amendment on Feb. 1. Nevada's first state Legislature ratified the amendment on Feb. 16, making it the 16th state to support the constitutional abolition of slavery, two months prior to Lincoln's assassination on April 15, and almost 10 months before ratification was completed on Dec. 6, 1865.

The Nevada Legislature took the unusual step of authorizing Gov. Henry Blasdel to telegraph the resolution of ratification to President Lincoln. According to UNR political science professor Elmer Rusco in "Good Time Coming: Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century" (1975), "A resolution commending President Lincoln and his administration stated that the amendment to abolish slavery marked 'the dawn of a new political era, and [we] pray that its principles may be ever enforced until regenerated America shall forget the name of slave.' "